Tax Day: Part I

[katranna]

Paid my taxes today, and had an interesting moment while I was waiting in line at the post office. I know I make little money. I'm unemployed right now, but I always knew my previous job paid me little money--$21K a year, and no health insurance once I transitioned from TA to Part Time Lecturer. ($21K was actually the high point--as a PTL I got a

Comments

[katranna]

I have to say, as a former TA/PTL, I am very pro-union, as they were the ones who got us the raise to $21K from the initial laughable starting point of $18K (which is what my initial TA contract was for) and it was solely thanks to the union's efforts that we got health insurance, and maternity leave, and a lot of other nice and yet necessary things. Currently, the union is fighting for us PTLs and TAs to maintain control over our material--the University was pushing for a policy where we would put all our material/lectures/etc online, and then of course they're able to run online classes without the people who put the class together in the first place.

That said, I keep hearing about union workers who don't actually do their jobs and yet can't be fired and that is weird to me... I am pretty sure most unions have a review process for that...

[areyou_hungup]

I wanted you to know that I understand. I make the same amount of money a year teaching middle school,that you make as a TA, and this is actually the most amount of money I've ever made so I'm sort of happy. I'm also getting an MA which means that at some point, I'll probably be making no more than the amount of money I make now. I don't really see much moving up from that amount. And, standing in line at a coffee shop yesterday, this Manhattan girl, my age probably, but dressed better I guess, just took like a stack of fifty dollar bills from her purse to pay with cash, and I guess, well, It's been so long since I've seen a $50 bill. And I just wondered, how much money do you have to have to just carry bills like that all the time? How strange of a feeling, all it took was having to compare myself to someone. Oh well.

[antiscian]

Aww, but I was hoping that there would be a Part II!

[katranna]

Oh crap, there was gonna be! I forgot.